All posts for the month January, 2015

So, yeah, not going to be much of a post today. Had an “exciting” dental appointment and my brain is mush. To make up for it, I offer otters graciously donated by Tyger. 🙂

Also a quick screenshot of one of the single player games I’ve been playing lately: The Bridge. Nifty little puzzle game where one of the mechanics is tilting the world around you to manipulate yourself and other objects. It’s most likely on the list of things everyone else has already played. ^^ Other than the puzzle parts, I’m liking the black and white hand drawn style and, of course, the way the areas remind me of work by M. C. Escher. There’s an underlying story that I haven’t played enough to really flesh out, but it intrigues me.

And that’s really all I got in me tonight. Cannot haz brain, dental stuff stole all of it!

Somewhere in the middle of chatting about The Secret World on a stream for another game, ’cause I’m like that, I was reminded of something I used to love in my games that doesn’t seem to happen as often anymore – the need for a pen and a pad of paper. [I suppose, light spoiler warnings for the pics I’m using later in the post. Myst and Obsidian are awfully old for spoiler warnings though, and the TSW mission is from one of the earlier missions in the Savage Coast area.]

I remember making maps for The Legend of Zelda and jotting down melodies in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. The old text games of course; I needed my own maps and notes there. The Myst games, before they added a screenshot option and less so after, were responsible for plenty of time spent writing and drawing things out. I think I took notes for most of my early PC games, there were always a few puzzles that made more sense if I wrote it out or a maze that became much easier if you drew a map.

Am I the only one who feels like participating in the game in that way drew me into the story and world of the game more? Perhaps I should rephrase since I know plenty of folks who agree with me, it just feels like games are more often made to streamline that part of gaming right out the door. Continue Reading

Fridays are about to get busier over in Gryph’s world. 🙂 A friend of mine is starting up a new Pathfinder campaign and with any luck I’ll be jumping into that next week. (For those unfamiliar, it’s pen and paper roleplaying, similar to Dungeons and Dragons.) We’ll see what that does to my attempted schedule over here – go fig, I decide to start writing more with my free time and I add a couple more regular livestreams to my schedule. I’m certainly not complaining though!

A few of my friends initially told me that updating three times a week was being hard on myself, but I swear it made sense when I started. >_> In any case, it gives me an excuse to write about gaming that isn’t limited to video games. Continue Reading

This post is all me, incidentally; I’m not reflecting the views of my friends or anyone I livestream with.

I’ve gone through multiple drafts trying to explain why I didn’t post anything this Monday, but maybe it’s better to be brief. There was a topic related to gaming that I very much wanted to talk about. However, it was tangentially related to topics that friends of mine have been harassed over. Ironically the core topic was related to harassment in the online gaming community.

So, to put it together, I wanted to write about harassment issues/solutions in gaming, but hesitated because I know people who have gotten harassed because they talked about harassment issues/solutions in gaming.

I could further explain, but for now I just wanted to be honest about it. Right or wrong, I wanted to write about something and then stumbled because I wasn’t entirely certain it was a smart idea to give my entire opinion. And if I’m going to write dishonestly, I’m defeating the purpose of writing at all.

Probably I will still cover the actual main topic, given more time to think. But for anyone convinced the last chunk of months in gaming only affected folks who are well known, or who “have an axe to grind,” or who probably aren’t “real” gamers, or that it’s only scared sheeple blindly following the biased media, you are mistaken. Take from that whatever you want to take, but hopefully I can at least make that point.

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Blog will recommence on gaming topics Friday. I decided last July (timing!) that it was past time to both start writing again and to start looking into careers in the gaming industry. I’ll post about that second one eventually. The point today is that it makes what I’m doing here doubly important to me and also makes it rather harder to ignore topics that friends of mine in the industry, online media, and academia are still very much dealing with.

The original plan for LFGryph had been to post M/W/F, possibly a few weekend posts. I still like that plan, but my schedule has changed for an exciting reason. As some of you already know, the lovely and witty folks over at Beyond the Veil have welcomed me onto their weekly podcast. For those unfamiliar, they cover gaming/community news and commentary from The Secret World. (Livestreamed Thursdays at 7pm EST, may contain adult language.) I am super thrilled about that, but it does mean I’ve got an extra obligation every week besides offline things and the occasional streaming I was already doing with Tyger and Otterly Gaming. I would like some nights open for my own gaming and, you know, those offline obligations.

As a compromise, I’m going to start using Wednesdays as a casual-blog day to chat about whatever games I’m playing that week. Sometimes it’ll be from my main MMO’s and sometimes one of the single player ones. These won’t be meant as reviews, just casual talk about some of what I’m up to. This also means I can fix a few issues I had with my “Currently Gaming” list. I wanted to have more space to chat about some of them, and I game jump with my single player games enough that it seems awkward to keep a running list.

This Wednesday I’m going to focus on rearranging some things on here and making sure my ducks are in a row for tomorrow, but with luck I’ll be able to start the new plan next week. Thanks for your patience, and have a great day/night/time-of-day!

“I hate that game, it’s such a grind.” I often hear this complaint, and I’ve probably said it myself before. Most gamers can probably think of at least one game where mindlessly running the same missions or fighting the same battles over and over in order to progress soured the rest of the experience. So why, then, am I sometimes a fan of grinding? Continue Reading